9. What's in a name?

Out of nowhere it came to me: Ishmael. Like a casual friend, it hung out in my consciousness. Waiting. Weeks passed. It just stayed there. A word that would not go away . . . but for what?

When the day came that I decided to write a blog, I immediately *knew* what to call it. "Clearly," I thought to myself, "that is the name of the blog."

The reason for the name was another thing. Up until now I have written and ignored the small aspect of why "Ishmael". Was my intuition guiding me correctly? So let's address the meaning of the name, if such exists.

Not being a Biblical scholar, I barely recognized that "Ishmael" has its roots in early Jewish, Christian, and Islamic history. Son of Abraham, Ishmael was born of a handmaiden when Sara could not conceive. Later, Sara did have a son, Isaac, and that started a family feud that has lasted to this day.

Both Jewish and Islamic traditions consider Ishamel as the ancestor of Arab people. Interestingly enough, Islamic tradition maintains that it was Ishmael, not Isaac, was was nearly sacrificed by Abraham . . . and was saved at the last minute when God allowed Abraham to sacrifice a ram (lamb) instead of his son.

There is another Ishmael: that of Daniel Quinn's book. It opens with a deceptively ordinary personals ad: "Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world."

A young man answers the ad and is startled to find that the teacher is a gorilla named Ishmael, a creature who sees humanity from a new perspective. He is a student of ecology, life, freedom, and the human condition.

He is also a teacher. He teaches that which all humans must learn -- if our species, and the rest of life on Earth as we know it, is to survive.

So there it is: family feud or ecology. Will it be one or both? Stay tuned . . . In the meantime, watch out for those thousand pound gorillas.